A recent study by the New England Journal of Medicine showed that COVID-19 can remain active on cardboard for up to 24 hours. Most cafes and shops that use loyalty/reward cards use cardboard cards. Plastic is worse, with the virus remaining active for up to 72 hours.
Smooth-coated cardboard cards (eg “cello-glaze”) would remain a risk somewhere between 24 and 72 hours. Normally loyalty cards would be handled by multiple cashiers and customers over 1-3 days. Compounding this is the fact that multiple loyalty cards are often kept together – either in a customer’s wallet or purse, or in a card box in the shop.
This means that regular customer loyalty cards are a significant potential infection vector.
In light of this new information, shops should stop using physical loyalty cards immediately.
To encourage this, we’ve decided to make our loyalty system, The Get One Free Club, completely free for businesses (it is already free for customers). We don’t know how long these social distancing measures will last, but we will endeavour to keep it free for a minimum of 3 months, and longer if we can.
Our app is completely contactless, and on modern phones has a maximum scanning distance of just over 2m. It is a drop-in replacement for the standard loyalty rewards card commonly used in cafes, bakeries, etc. Who knew that this little app could potentially save lives? Please use it instead of handling physical loyalty cards ASAP.
Businesses can sign up here, there’s nothing additional to do, it will just show up as a free trial for a minimum of 3 months.
About The Author: Geoff Ellison
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